A survey on complex knowledge base question answering: Methods, challenges and solutions

• Main Authors: LAN, Yunshi, HE, Gaole, JIANG, Jinhao, JIANG, Jing, ZHAO, Wayne Xin, WEN, Ji-Rong
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Knowledge representation and reasoning; General Natural language processing; General; Databases and Information Systems
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6762; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7765/viewcontent/2105.11644.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Knowledge base question answering (KBQA) aims to answer a question over a knowledge base (KB). Recently, a large number of studies focus on semantically or syntactically complicated questions. In this paper, we elaborately summarize the typical challenges and solutions for complex KBQA. We begin with introducing the background about the KBQA task. Next, we present the two mainstream categories of methods for complex KBQA, namely semantic parsing-based (SP-based) methods and information retrieval-based (IR-based) methods. We then review the advanced methods comprehensively from the perspective of the two categories. Specifically, we explicate their solutions to the typical challenges. Finally, we conclude and discuss some promising directions for future research.